


Tear It Down

by sebastianstanstongue



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 17:56:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3701371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sebastianstanstongue/pseuds/sebastianstanstongue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's their endgame, and it's Pierce move.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tear It Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dayadhvam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dayadhvam/gifts).



> A thousand thanks to PhoenixFalls for the beta!

Pierce stood for a few minutes after Nick left his office, the ghost of their parting handshake still lingering around the edges of his palm. After all these years, Nick could still surprise him. It was an admirable quality – one among many that he possessed – but it was also a liability Pierce could no longer afford.

He wasn't surprised Nick had shown up at his office asking for a vote to delay Project Insight. Fact was, he'd carefully orchestrated it. No, the surprise was Batroc and the Lemurian Star. It was always a given that Nick would have to be among the first priority targets swept up by Project Insight, but hiring Batroc as a ruse for stealing the satellite launcher's files only proved he was a wild card that could still cause trouble before the launch. And that just wouldn't do, not when Pierce was so close to seeing the fruition of everything he'd worked for over his career.

God may have created the world in six days but Pierce's improvement project, well, that had taken a few decades to craft, building upon the foundation laid by his predecessors decades before.

Pierce walked over to the credenza and poured himself a drink: twenty-five year old Scotch, neat. He didn't often drink at the office anymore. Funny how things lose their propriety over time, but what the hell. This was something like a special occasion, after all.

He sat at his desk and lifted the glass, letting the aroma of the amber liquid warm his nostrils. From his high perch within the Triskelion he could see the trees across the Potomac, afire in their autumn colors. The close of another year was just around the corner.

He and Nick went back a long way – two parallel lives never quite converging. They had been friends once. He liked to think they still were; but trust was a luxury neither one of them could afford. Call it an occupational hazard, or a shared quirk of their individual natures. Still, they'd passed some interesting time together since Bogotá.

If it had been ages since Nick had come to his office, it'd been even longer since they'd shared a bed. Davos, wasn't it? Or Zurich? That seemed like the sort of thing a person should remember. But no, of course, it was Aspen. December 1991. Such an auspicious year, how could he forget? Maybe his age was finally catching up with him.

He and Nick had been seated in armchairs by a roaring fire in a private chateau nestled high up in the Rockies. It was late, and they were alone but for the bartender and a few of Pierce's aides in the corner giving deliberate space. They were there for a high-level conference on international intelligence cooperation, with Nick only reluctantly agreeing to come after much cajoling and a direct order. The diplomatic glad-handing of meetings like this really wasn't Nick's thing. He did his best work from the shadows.

A certain asset had recently come into Pierce's possession: a post-Cold War transfer from his Russian counterparts. A lot of things were being transferred from Soviet HYDRA for safe keeping against the political and social upheaval that was unfolding. This one had the most potential, although the higher ups couldn't see it and wanted to keep the asset on ice. But Pierce knew the power of butterfly wings – one seemingly insignificant event could cause a maelstrom given time. And a series of those events could build, one upon another, like waves in a karmic tide that would sweep the whole world away.

That's why he'd wanted Nick to come. Pierce had a plan, and Nick's input at the front end would be invaluable. Nick had great instincts – better than Pierce's. But first he would need to feel Nick out to determine if he'd make the jump or not. Well, the move from S.H.I.E.L.D. to HYDRA wasn't so much a jump as a sideways step. Even so, Pierce doubted Nick would budge, but he allowed himself to entertain some small hope. It wasn't just sentiment driving him. Nick had always been a formidable partner. Pierce couldn't have accomplished half as much with S.H.I.E.L.D. alone as he'd been able to do with Nick as his right hand in the Director's seat.

They were three drinks in before Pierce broached the subject, with all the care and plausible deniability he'd have taken with an East German asset on the verge of defecting.

“What if you could make the world a safer place?” he'd asked. “I mean, really safer. Not for everybody, maybe, but for the vast majority. And all it would cost was a dozen or so lives. Would you do it?”

Nick settled back in his chair, considering. “Whose lives are we talking about?”

“Does it matter?”

“Shouldn't it matter?”

“Okay,” Pierce said, leaning in closer to him. “Say it was a doctor, a lawyer, a politician, a pro athlete, a scientist, a businessman, somebody's mother...”

“Any of these people actually criminals?”

“Besides the politician?”

Nick didn't laugh. It was a tired joke, anyway.

“Are we talking purely hypothetical here, or are you already making a list and checking it twice?”

Pierce shrugged. “It was just a question. I'm always curious to see where you might draw the line.”

“Collateral damage is one thing, but yes, I do draw the line at specifically targeting innocent civilians. Don't you?”

“Is anyone ever really innocent?”

Nick said nothing but his pointed stare was all the answer Pierce needed: he would go so far, but no further. The silence that settled between them was broken only by the crackling of the fire and the aides in the corner ordering another round, until Pierce took up the more mundane questions of what Nick thought the future might hold for Eastern Europe, and whether D.C. would ever get a major league baseball team again. After a while, Nick finished his drink and stood.

“You coming?”

Pierce raised his not-quite-empty glass and gave it a little shake. Nick feigned offense, grumbling something about “fucked up priorities” before leaving the bar.

Pierce sat nursing his drink for a few minutes more. He motioned one of his aides over.

“The Winter Soldier program is a go. Tell the med techs to thaw and prep the asset for a target acquisition briefing at oh nine hundred tomorrow.”

The aide withdrew. Pierce took one last swallow and set the empty tumbler down. He considered ordering another but stopped himself. It really wouldn't do to keep an old friend waiting.

He knew then it would be the last time. And now here they were, on the brink of another, more permanent, parting. They'd been in each other's corner a long time and Pierce had systematically culled everyone else from his inner circle over the years. Nick Fury was the last man standing.

Pierce didn't know what had triggered Nick's suspicion about Project Insight. The thought that perhaps it had been the memory of that 'hypothetical' conversation over twenty years ago made him chuckle. Maybe Nick had thought he'd covered his tracks by running the money he used to hire Batroc through all those fictitious accounts. Or maybe he knew that no one would have made the connection to that last account and Elmhurst Drive except Pierce; he'd had Thanksgiving dinner there once upon a time. Who could ever forget Mother Fury's pecan pie? So either Nick was confident Pierce was clean, or he'd wanted to leave a few obscure breadcrumbs to draw Pierce out and make him show his hand.

Sealing the Lemurian Star's files with Nick's own authorization had been Pierce's breadcrumb for him, insurance against the contingency that Nick would come snooping.

Did Nick know he'd been manipulated? The safest assumption was that he did. He suspected everyone of having a hidden agenda; that's probably why he was still alive. They were playing a very subtle game of ten dimensional chess. Lies within lies, feints and misdirections covering the most cunning sleights of hand.

The mongoose and the cobra, both of them the hunter and the hunted.

 _I forced his hand, now he's forced mine,_ Pierce thought. _Tit for tat; it's only fair_.

It was always going to come to this. Knowing that didn't make it any easier in the end, but he hadn't come all this way to lose his nerve at the eleventh hour.

He turned to his laptop and opened the encrypted email program. There was just one final order of business he needed to attend to before calling for that vote Nick had requested.

 

> FROM: alexander.pierce@us.triskelion.shd
> 
> TO: brock.rumlow@us.triskelion.shd
> 
> SUBJECT: TS//SAR-WS Program Orders
> 
>   
>  Target confirmed. Deploy asset.

  
Every ending heralded a new beginning. So many things in this world that seemed solid and sure would be lost, their true ephemeral nature laid bare by the elegance of a mathematical algorithm. But there would be no time to mourn. Once Project Insight was launched, that's when the real work would begin.

Pierce leaned back, raising his drink. “To old friends and new beginnings,” he said to the empty room and drained his glass.

*****


End file.
